Memoirs
by Alliron
Summary: Austria reflects back on his life before he learned what it meant to be a nation, in the context of history. - Painstakingly researched to be historically accurate. Based on an idea from this tumblr post: real-smug-caryatid./post/130435142667/tiny-china-contemplating-with-some-pandas-i-really I might write more chapters from other character's points of view,


When you're as old as I am, your head begins to run out of space. I used to remember full details of my past. I was once able to recall every noble who ever ruled over my land – in order. But now reading an outdated history text book or an old letter, if I'm lucky, is the only way I can even catch the smallest glimpse into my life no longer remembered. It isn't like there's anyone around you can ask for answers.

I'm over a thousand years old, give or take a few decades. I stopped counting years ago, though Wikipedia tells me I'm 1039. It doesn't matter how old I am, though, I finally came to terms with my own immortality after my best friend died in 1827.

My earliest memory is of a man with a spear and a long beard reaching for my hand. "What are you doing here, son?" He says with a friendly smile. "Where's your mother?"

But that's not something you read about in a history text book; I don't know where my mother is. I never actually learned who she was for certain. Though I do remember once, a long time ago, Ljudmila – Slovenia – showed me a very old letter. It was written in a very archaic form of Latin, describing a woman named "Noricum" who lived in the same area and looked apparently just like me. Perhaps she is my grandmother, my mother, who knows? I'm 1000 years old, is it wrong that I can't bring myself to care any longer?

I remember the first time I saw myself. It was minutes after the man found me, he was walking me back to… a group of people. I don't remember much… but we passed a river and he bent down to take a drink. I have always disliked the water, but he coaxed me forward enough to see my reflection and take a drink. At first, I was confused that he could be next to me and in the water. But when a smaller face appeared next to his, it took him some time to explain that the little boy in the water was my own face.

I reached for my hair, feeling the long and curly strands between my fingers. He laughed, finding it odd that a child had never seen his own face before. We continued walking, but I wanted to return and stare more at my own reflection. Why did I look that way? Why did I have a glow to my face that the man with me didn't seem to have?

I don't remember where we went, or who we spoke to. I couldn't have been more than a toddler, in human years. The only thing I do remember is looking in a mirror at myself years and years later, noticing that I hadn't changed a bit. Other children became taller and wiser and more physically capable, but I was… small. There were no other children like me.

There was an endless line of people who looked after me. I remember many of them being born, growing up with me, looking after me as they became adults and I did not, and their deaths. The first few were sad, and eventually I came not to cry at funerals as I looked to the child next to me and knew that they were to be in the casket as soon as their predecessors.

I was allowed to wander the grounds outside the palace we lived in. Nobody liked letting me go too far for too long on my own as they just knew that someone would be waiting to "snatch me up and conquer the whole region". When I was little I didn't know just how serious that could've been. One day, though, they were almost right.

I was just exploring through the woods, looking for a river, I remember, and I heard someone laugh. It was a child's laugh, so I wasn't scared immediately. However, a small boy jumped out of the bushes with a growl, and I fell backwards in surprise. He immediately struck me as completely different from all the other children. He had long brown hair and a wide smile, looking ready to crack a joke at any moment, and he wasn't much taller than I was. There was a familiar glow around him, too, but that may have just been the light. He laughed and walked over to me, stepping on my leg. I cried out in pain, but he slapped a hand over my mouth. "Shut up!" He said with a laugh. "What's your name?" He said, taking his hand away.

"Roderich," I pouted, forgetting that I had been told not to talk to strangers.

"No, _stupid_ ," he said, rolling his eyes. "Your place. Like what are you."

"What?" I didn't understand his question.

"I can tell you're like me. I'm Ungarn. But they call me Mihály after my boss." He crossed his arms. "So who are you?"

"I don't… know what you're saying." These words meant nothing to me. Actually, this boy was literally speaking a different language than me. Yet, I could understand him. I knew those words were different, but I wasn't sure how. I knew what he was saying, but I didn't understand what he meant.

He groaned. "You're not very smart. How old are you?" He asked.

I didn't have an answer.

He groaned again. "Ugh. You don't know _anything!_ Why don't you know anything?"

"Well… how old are you!" I shot back, not knowing what else to say.

"I'm eighty years old!" He proudly proclaimed, holding a small, wooden sword in the hair. It was obviously a toy, but it was never one of the toys I was interested in playing with.

"But the grown-ups I know are only forty!" I exclaimed. This boy was crazy, I had decided.

"Well, dummy, it's because we're different." He rolled his eyes again, clearly not loving the fact that he had to explain these apparently basic concepts to me.

"Roderich!" Someone called in the distance. "Supper time!" I scrambled to get up and immediately ran.

"Bye!" He laughed, disappearing into the bushes behind me. I didn't see him again for another twenty years or so, I believe. I can't imagine telling myself as a child that the boy I had just met would one day become my wife.

One of the people who took care of me was named Leopold. There were many Leopolds and I do not remember which one this was, but I knew that he was raised next to me and I watched him grow as I did not. I wandered into his study one day, ready with a question as he looked up at me.

"Roddy boy, what can I do for you?"

"How old am I, sir?" I asked.

I remember his face freezing for a split second, at least, I think it did, and he smiled. "Why, you're only six, Roddy boy."

"Okay." I said.

"Why do you ask?"

"One time I met a boy who said he was eighty years old. He looked like me." I left his study, needing no further explanation. I accepted this answer as I had no concept of the passage of time. I wasn't allowed outside much after that, as apparently Mihaly was an uninvited guest.

But then Leopold had a son, his name was also Leopold. I watched as he grew from an infant into a child, and his sixth birthday came what seems to be moments after my meeting with his father.

"Leopold is eight." I said to his mother one day, not long afterwards. Her name was, according to Wikipedia, probably Agnes. Leopold now towered over me, like the rest of the children.

"Yes, he is." She said, bending down to speak to me.

"Am I eight, too? He was six after I was six." Thank god she was a mother, because she understood what I said.

She laughed in response, fluffing out my hair playfully. "Oh, silly Roddy boy." She said. "If we read the histories, I'd say you're nearly 130." Agnes was a lovely woman, but her answer only further confused me. But after she died, nobody was very clear with me about my age. She was still younger than Mihaly apparently was when she died at the age of seventy.

Not long afterwards, another young boy came to visit, accompanied by a priest, and taller man in very fancy clothing. The boy had the same glow that I did in my reflection, and that Mihaly did when I had met him. He was like me. The younger of the Leopolds, now my superior, introduced me to this boy, saying "It's probably time you met… Lothair, and his… ah…" he looked down at the boy.

The man named Lothair stepped forward. "That is your majesty, to you, Leopold." He then looked down at me. "You are Austria, are you not?"

I didn't know what to say, this was the first time I had heard the name in terms of myself. "I'm Roderich… your majesty." I said, watching Leopold bow. I did the same.

"Listen, little Austria. You'll need to grow up fast if you are to help our Empire."

I wasn't sure what he was talking about, so I nodded. He walked past me, towards Leopold, and patted my head. "He doesn't know anything, your majesty, he's just a child," I heard Leopold say.

"Nonsense," Lothair said. "Our boy isn't much older than him and he is very knowledgeable about himself, his past, and his subjects. Including our little Austria."

The two began to argue as they continued forward. The priest followed, leaving myself and the other boy together.

"I'm Roderich," I said, bowing politely.

He bowed in return. "Hello." I waited for his name, but he gave none.

"What's your name?" I asked. He stared blankly, unable to give an answer. "Okay." I said, after several moments of his contemplation. He followed me inside.

He took off his hat as he entered the door, revealing the blondest hair I'd ever seen on a person. "Your hair is so yellow!" I said with a smile.

He clearly didn't know what to say in return, so he smiled and said, "Your hair is brown."

I showed him my favorite toys, but he looked uninterested with each new thing I showed him. I told him I had been learning to sing, but he didn't seem to care much for that earlier. "Do you have a library?" He asked eventually. I led him to the large assortment of books outside of Leopold's study. He actually smiled as we walked through rows and rows of huge shelves filled with books I could neither reach nor understand; they were all in Latin.

"You understand the old language?" I asked him, as that's what Leopold told me it was called. I was beginning to realize, though, that Leopold wasn't always filling me in to the furthest extent.

"Latin?" He said. "Yes. You do not?" I shook my head. "I will read you something." He spoke like an adult, and it was very off-putting and inspiring simultaneously.

He pulled books off the shelves and began to read and translate for me. He read me story after story of tales of "the histories" as Leopold and his wife called them. My head was filled with new information, and some of them were too amazing to believe. He paused in the middle of a sentence, looking up at me. "Why don't you know any of these?" He asked me.

"I don't know." I said.

"It is your duty to know them, Austria." He said plainly.

"Why do you keep calling me that? And why is it my duty?" I argued.

"Because you are Austria," He began. "And it is our duty to know our history because we are nations."

"Nations?" I asked. I saw the same exasperated look on his face as I had on Mihaly's.

"It is hard to understand. But we are special." He said, looking down at the book. "We can live forever if we live correctly."

"Forever?" I asked.

"How old are you?" He asked me.

"I am a hundred and thirty." I responded. I was older than that by that time, but that was the last time I had been updated on my own existence.

"We both already have lived longer than most people, Austria. But we are still growing. When we become powerful we will be like adults." He smiled. "When I am an adult, I am going to be the most powerful country on Earth."

I didn't know what he was talking about, but I nodded in agreement. He found a new book on the history of Austria – me, I guessed – and read it to me extensively until the library door opened hours later. Lothair stepped in, grabbing the boy quickly and whisking him away before turning to me.

"Listen, Austria," he said sternly. "You are to learn Latin and study up on your history before the new year begins. You are very behind and you need to learn these things if you are to help the Empire become powerful like Rome." He looked at the book that the boy had dropped, and placed it in my hands. "Get to work."

He and the boy left the house quickly, and I didn't see the boy again until I was a teenager. He didn't age much further than I had seen him the first time.

I quickly learned Latin and my history as Lothair instructed, and I found growing as quickly as my vocabulary. Leopold and his sons and their sons, too, learned to be more straightforward about my identity. I was the Duchy of Austria, servant of the Holy Roman Empire, and if I lived correctly, I could live forever.

From that point on I can more vividly remember my life. Perhaps that's how it is for humans, too. Once you are given an identity you begin to remember more and more. Though, perhaps I should not have listened to the little blonde boy, as he is the one who wound up dead. Mostly.

In the years to come I met hundreds of people like me. Some older, some younger, and all of them had a glow to their faces that only we can see. Most of them died in battle or just… stopped turning up. There are mysteries that Wikipedia cannot solve for me.

Will any of us live forever? Sometimes I hope so, and other times I hope I don't. It is quite draining to have lived this long, as I no longer remember things about my life that I would like to recall. Sometimes, though, I catch a glimpse of a face in a crowd, that glows just a little too much, and I know that nothing is forever. Someone will follow me.


End file.
